BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, which is to say, it works by organizing your computer and others to share the workload of hosting and moving files around the Internet.
To start with, you’ll need a BitTorrent client application to run on your computer. I use the well regarded Transmission for Mac. I hear good things about uTorrent for Windows.
If you don’t already know where to find the torrents (items) you want to download, a popular clearing house is the infamous anti-copyright site The Pirate Bay. Here you’ll find an overwhelming wealth of items, some legal, many pirated, some infected with viruses (primarily a concern for you Windows users). FYI, The Pirate Bay makes money for it’s operating expenses by selling advertising on their site; most of this advertising is porn.
(Evidently, some of the same people who will steal copyrighted material will pay for web porn. There’s some kind of business lesson in that seeming contradiction.)
You want to select torrents that have lots of active peers (aka seeders). Generally, the more computers there are lifting this load, the faster and more reliably your downloads will proceed.
To use BitTorrent effectively, you need to leave your client application up and running, day and night, in the background on a computer. This is a good use for an older computer that might otherwise be collecting dust, as a faster computer won’t help much. The bottleneck will be the plodding peer-to-peer file sharing network, transferring your selected torrents just a few bits at a time, over a period of hours or days or weeks.
I leave it your good judgement to do the right thing, when it comes to acquiring the intellectual work of others. If you’re looking to use BitTorrent to download free media (be it software or music or videos), know that (1) finding the exact items you want can be time consuming, (2) you won’t be sure of their quality or problems, until after you’ve downloaded it, (3) downloading large torrents (like expensive software install discs and high definition videos) can takes weeks, or sometimes won’t finish at all, and (4) you’ll need one (or more) large hard drives, if you download a lot of stuff. At this stage in the evolution of Internet speeds and technology, it is often faster and more reliable to purchase large software packages and rent videos on discs. Netflix will deliver a DVD to my door faster than i can download it via BitTorrent.
I don’t mean to suggest that all uses of BitTorrent are stealing. The technology itself is neutral; the protocol could care less what it’s used for. Because it’s an effective tool, many people employ it for legitimate purposes. For example, the excellent and free application Miro (available for Windows, Macs, and Linux) will helps you to find and download a wide variety of legitimate videos (and other media) from companies and individuals who are using the peer-to-peer Internet to distribute their media directly to you, cutting out the middle men (TV networks, iTunes, Amazon
, etc.).
If you have more questions about BitTorrent, come ask me about it on Twitter.
Following are some quick and dirty overviews, facts and links hastily gathered for a friend who (1) needs a new smart phone, (2) might benefit from an iPhone, but (3) is compelled to use Verizon Wireless, because only their network offers coverage where she works and lives. This is by no means exhaustively, nor even adequately, researched. But it’s a starting place.
All of these devices come with very little memory, usually 64 megabytes, compared to 8-16 gigabytes (aka 8000-16,000 megabytes) on the iPhone! So, to store anything more than some phone numbers and a few photos on these phones, you’ll also need to buy a microSD memory card (1-8 GB sizes available). Amazon has a SanDisk 8GB microSDHC Card for $28.
All these devices have wireless Bluetooth capabilities, though each may support slightly different Bluetooth features (known as “profiles”).
I will post the phones one at a time, below.
(FYI the following product photos all come from Amazon.com. Clicking on the photos will take you to a page listing that product and/or accessories. Full disclosure: I’ll earn a small commission if you click these links and buy from Amazon.com
. But you may find it more convenient, and immediately gratifying, to buy and activate your new phone in a retail store.)
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I wrote about this phone back when I decided to buy one for myself.
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